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The court, which is supported by British taxpayers' money, has around 160,000 cases on its books.

This year, the judges asked member states including Britain to hand over yet more money to help it deal with the caseload.

The backlog means delays of years to deal with important cases such as that of terror preacher Abu Qatada.

Britain already contributes £20million a year to the Council of Europe, the body which runs the Strasbourg Court.

Critics say the court should focus on important cases involving serious human rights issues instead of involving itself in minor incidents, and infringing on Parliamentary sovereignty on issues such as prisoner votes.

Last night former police minister Nick Herbert said: ‘This is a court that continuously overreaches itself, dealing with matters that do not relate to fundamental human rights and could perfectly well be left to domestic courts.

Rule of law: Judges at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg awarded the victim more than £6,000 despite Croatian courts previously dropping the case (file picture of Strasbourg court)

‘For so long as this goes on human rights will continue to be devalued in the eyes of the public which is a tragedy.’

In October, the court ruled in favour of a Serbian woman who complained about her leaky roof. It accepted the case despite the roof having been fixed five years ago.

Sixty-five year-old Milja Bjelajac, from the Serbian city of Novi Sad complained that her rights had been infringed because her loft apartment had not been fixed promptly by local housing officers.

The latest case involves a boy called
Tomislav Remetin who, in April 2003, was thirteen years old and playing
with three friends in a school playground in Dubrovnik.

He
claimed he found the ball in the playground, but another boy approached
him and asked for the ball back, claiming it was his. Tomislav refused.

Later, Tomislav alleged,
the second boy's father arrived, grabbed him by his t-shirt and kicked
and hit him, before taking the ball away.

Criticism: Former police minister Nick Herbert (pictured) said the court continuously overreaches itself, dealing with matters that do not relate to fundamental human rights

The man denied having attacked the boy and police abandoned the case claiming there was insufficient evidence.

The case spent several years in the Croatian courts system following several appeals, a trial and retrial, but was eventually dropped.

A civil claim also failed in 2009 and the following year the alleged victim applied to Strasbourg.

The Croatian government said the case had been dismissed because too much time had elapsed before it reached court.

But
the Strasbourg court, in a 20 page judgment, ruled that Tomislav's
rights under Article 8, the right to a private and family life, had been
breached, because the case should not have been ruled out of time.

They
awarded him 7,500 euros in damages.

Last
month Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said there was an 'urgent need'
for reform of the court which had taken on cases far beyond its original
remit.

He told a committee of MPs: 'The fundamental problem here is that the European Court of Human Rights has moved a long way from the views of the originators of the conventions back in the 1950s.

'The original European convention on human rights was a laudable document written by conservatives after the holocaust, when Stalin was in power in Russia and people were being sent to the gulags without trial.

'Over the period since then, the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights has, in my view, moved further and further away from the original intention and purpose of that convention.'